The Republican crack-up has begun
By: Sasha Abramsky (The Nation via MSN)
Not quite a crackup. But the adults in the GOP are going to take away the keys to the T-bird.
Minnesotans did win against Trump's BIGGER Big Government. And in Trump world that means Trump lost.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Earlier this week, Gary Kendrick, a GOP council member in the red town of El Cajon, on San Diego’s eastern outskirts, announced that he was crossing the aisle and joining the Democrats. Kendrick was the longest-serving Republican official in the region’s local government. “I’ve been a Republican for 50 years,” he said, in the statement explaining his action. “I just can’t stand what the Republican Party has become. I’m formally renouncing the Republican Party.”
An attorney friend of mine in San Diego, who knows local politics inside out, texted me, “When Trump has lost this guy, he’s in real trouble!”
President Donald Trump’s authoritarian project is finally running into real headwinds. That doesn’t mean that the danger is passing—far from it, as Trump’s escalating attacks on the voting process in the runup to the mid-term elections illustrate and as his venomous, racist social media posts testify to. But it does mean that Trump is losing control of the storyline. Even among his own base, there is a growing realization that there is something rotten at the core of his administration.
Having failed to break the will of Minnesotans despite two months of federal occupation, humiliation rituals, and brutal violence, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Thursday morning that it was ending the Minneapolis surge. It wasn’t because the surge had failed, Tom Homan was quick to claim; it was because Minnesota authorities had begun to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Customs and Border Protection.
Don’t believe Homan’s explanation. The surge is ending because tens of thousands of Minnesotans stood strong and proud. They protested in the face of sometimes lethal violence meted out by ICE agents. They protected their neighbors. They refused to be cowed. And, as the ICE atrocities multiplied, the US public increasingly came to side with Minnesota in its struggle against this federally ordered occupation. By the end of January, more Americans told pollsters they wanted to abolish ICE than told them they wanted to keep the agency intact.
When this horrific chapter is written into US history books, Minnesota will be understood as the place where ordinary Americans defeated Stephen Miller’s might-is-right, white supremacist vision. Nonviolent protesters confronted the armed might of the federal government, and the federal government, having lost the battle for heart and minds, retreated. It is also in Minnesota where Democrats finally decided to fight over the funding for and accountability of ICE and its related security agencies.
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Did anyone happen to notice Sec. of State Marco Rubio walking back Trump's hard line stance against the EU? Yep, we're all good buddies again.
Trump is being forced to retreat on the world stage and at home. Trump has lost the ability to create enough chaos to distract from his vulnerabilities.
The 'Trump 2028' BS may be the last straw.
Actually, he was countering Vance's hardline speech to the Europeans last year.
Trump is being forced to retreat on the world stage and at home.
I don't know if that is true.
The 'Trump 2028' BS may be the last straw.
He won't be around in 2028. The left will have to deal with someone who is very careful with his words and doesn't provide his enemies with a ton of ammunition every other day. Trump's last hurrah will be this year's midterms. The experts claim that the only thing that will count is the economy. Where the economy stands in June may tell us a lot.
Still a walk back. The rhetoric toward the EU has cooled considerably since Trump was schooled on Greenland.
I don't believe that will be Trump's choice. My expectation is that Trump would just quit after the midterms. But he has so many monuments to himself in the works that quitting would be difficult. I doubt Trump would accept an East Wing crater as his legacy.
Revitalizing manufacturing is proving to be a bit harder than expected. Apparently Trump thought throwing money at the private sector would be enough. Entrepreneurship just doesn't work that way anymore. Now immigration has become a lame horse. If Trump had focused attention on the coasts the politics might have worked. The heartland just doesn't scare worth a damn. The mishandling of the surge in Minnesota has even knocked fraud off the news cycle. Democrats are controlling the narrative now and there's no way to turn back the clock in time for the midterms.
And now Trump is having to soften his aggressive, confrontational approach to the EU and NATO now that it looks like Europe is quite willing to walk away. It looks like Trump has even lost Canada to China. Ukraine is positioning itself to be an arms merchant capable of competing with the US. Zelensky seems to be putting a lot of effort into demonstrating Ukraine would be valuable to Europe.
The whole 'flood the zone' strategy was supposed to confuse the opposition and not base of support. It's beginning to look like Trump lacked the discipline to use that strategy effectively. And now Republicans will pay for it.
BTW, when was the last time Trump was sighted with a MAGA hat? Trump has been wearing a lot of caps but MAGA seems to have gone missing.
Is that why Rubio got a standing ovation?
My expectation is that Trump would just quit after the midterms.
I very much doubt that.
Revitalizing manufacturing is proving to be a bit harder than expected. Apparently Trump thought throwing money at the private sector would be enough. Entrepreneurship just doesn't work that way anymore. Now immigration has become a lame horse. If Trump had focused attention on the coasts the politics might have worked. The heartland just doesn't scare worth a damn. The mishandling of the surge in Minnesota has even knocked fraud off the news cycle. Democrats are controlling the narrative now and there's no way to turn back the clock in time for the midterms.
But the media says the economy will be all that counts. What do we believe?
And now Trump is having to soften his aggressive, confrontational approach to the EU and NATO now that it looks like Europe is quite willing to walk away. It looks like Trump has even lost Canada to China. Ukraine is positioning itself to be an arms merchant capable of competing with the US. Zelensky seems to be putting a lot of effort into demonstrating Ukraine would be valuable to Europe.
Those may be good things, starting with the US not having to put up 60% of the funding of NATO.
The whole 'flood the zone' strategy was supposed to confuse the opposition and not base of support. It's beginning to look like Trump lacked the discipline to use that strategy effectively. And now Republicans will pay for it.
US politics seems to have cycles. The key is to be in the up cycle just before the midterms.
BTW, when was the last time Trump was sighted with a MAGA hat? Trump has been wearing a lot of caps but MAGA seems to have gone missing.
Wearing that hat is very dangerous. Somebody on the left might just kill anyone wearing one.
It looks like he's soon going to be in for a msjor setback . . .
I will predict right now Trump will only get worse, and people who say that have been right so far.
He is mentally ill and about 40% of the population either doesn't care or applauds him for it.
Trump will never accept he is losing it. He will keep pushing forward and ratcheting things up.
And adding to that his physical health is deteriorating as well.